noreast chat room
allow me to explain, and please correct me at this topic if i am wrong.
first, i am not an internet guy and i have never even been in a chat room, so maybe i am basing my opinion under incorrect assumptions.
my understanding of what chat rooms are and how they work is that anonymous people carry on conversations online. sounds like the discussion board, but differs in that it is faster, more spontaneous, not archived, not searchable or retrievable.
if my understanding is inaccurate - please accept my apologies and correct me.
i do not have any problem with the humor, banter, disagreements, controversies, personality clashes etc;
that occur on the posted reports or the discussion boards. it is either educational, or at least entertaining.
the beauty of the discussion boards and the posted reports is that it is out in the open for all the world to see, now or a year from now. if posters have a disagreement, there is a written record that they can review and clear up any misunderstanding they may have. although i post anonymously, i stand by my posts and would not be afraid to have any one of them published on the front page of the daily newspaper along with my name and photo. i think the fact that we are a community of anglers that do interact in the real world helps keep any of the negative discussions from truly getting out of control. 99.99 % of us are not willing to make complete fools of ourselves in public.
if members are going to have unpleasant exchanges in a chat room, 10 minutes later, they will not even remember EXACTLY what they themselves have actually said or the other member's words either. (this is the difference between written correspondence and verbal interaction. this is why we have stenographers and court transcripts.)
what they will remember is the escalating, negative emotions they have felt towards the other member.
as i said before, i think that the amount of negative exchanges on the posted reports and discussion boards are really less in number or severity than one might otherwise expect. i think taking disagreements into a chat room will only tend to make enemies out of people that really only had simple disagreements or misunderstandings that could have been positively resolved in the discussion forums to the benefit of all members. i fear that these now intensified negative relationships will spill back into the discussion boards and posted reports and poison other discussions.
private messaging is great for communications that do not involve the general membership. it would be nice if they would include a confirmation that they had been recieved, as well as sent messages to be saved by the sender.
noreast george,
obviously, i very much enjoy this site, and only write this in the interest of keeping this the number one fishing site on the net.
Seriously, I've already had positive feedback about it from the few that have used it in its unofficial, unpromoted, bells and whistle-less beta testing form. Guys that would have never even spoken to, or known of each other have made arrangements to meet and fish together, others have gotten home from a day or night of fishing and were able to share their experiences real time with those of like interest while others bounced their days or evenings events off of each other. Posting something and having someone else read it, and possibly respond to it is one thing, but having a real conversation with someone is something all together different. Now obviously, none of us are ready to just go and blindly post our addresses and phone numbers here (****, most won't even tell you where they fish!), but being able to have a conversation with someone, get to know what they are like, seeing that you might have things, methods, places or acquaintances in common might foster the beginning of a new friendship or fishing partnership. As I said, if it's there and you don't see it's usefulness or benefit you don’t have to use it. It's not the Boogie Man, I promise you it won't come out and bite you while you're sleeping.
